Business and Regeneration in Thanet: Discovery Park to Dreamland

Regeneration on the isle has a longer record than the phrase usually implies. Money has been coming into Thanet under one programme or another since the 1990s, and enough of it has landed to make the results assessable rather than aspirational.

The honest summary is mixed and specific. Some of it worked, visibly. Some of it produced buildings without producing the employment that was promised alongside them. And the largest single site on the isle remains an argument rather than a development.

Discovery Park at Sandwich

The closure of the pharmaceutical research campus at Sandwich in 2011 removed around two and a half thousand jobs from east Kent in one announcement. The response was to designate the site an enterprise zone and open it to multiple occupiers.

Discovery Park now houses a mix of independent science, technology and life-sciences companies alongside the part of the original operation that remained, with laboratory and office space let to businesses that could not have built such facilities themselves. That is the genuine achievement: the specialist infrastructure stayed in use, and a cluster survived where the default outcome was an empty campus.

What it has not done is replace the employment in kind. A site with many small tenants employs fewer people than one large research operation, and the jobs are differently distributed. Anyone comparing the before and after figures should compare them honestly, and local politicians of every colour have at times not.

For jobseekers the practical point is that Discovery Park is not an employer. It is a landlord, and vacancies are advertised by the individual companies rather than centrally.

Margate: the gallery and what followed

Turner Contemporary opened on the harbour arm at Margate in 2011, on the site where Turner himself had stayed. It was the largest cultural investment the isle had seen and it was contested locally before it opened, on the reasonable grounds that a gallery is not a job.

Two things happened that the objection did not anticipate. Visitor numbers were substantially higher than forecast, and the Old Town behind the harbour filled with independent shops, cafes and galleries that had not existed before. The combination created a visitor economy of a different kind from the one that collapsed with the package holiday: shorter stays, higher spend, out of season.

The costs are equally real. Property values rose faster than local incomes, private rents followed, and the improvement is unevenly distributed across a town where some wards remain among the most deprived in the county. That is not an argument against the gallery. It is the thing that needed planning for alongside it and largely was not.

Dreamland

The amusement park reopened in 2015 after years of dereliction, campaigning and a compulsory purchase process, with the restored scenic railway as its centrepiece. The site had been closed and partly burnt, and its recovery was driven substantially by a local campaign rather than by a developer.

Its commercial history since has been uneven, with changes of operator and of model, moving between a heritage amusement park and a music and events venue. The park operates, the listed rollercoaster runs, and the site is not derelict, which is a considerably better outcome than the trajectory it was on in 2005.

The lesson locally drawn from Dreamland is about ownership. The campaign succeeded because the heritage case was strong enough to support compulsory purchase, and that is not a route available for an ordinary derelict site.

Ramsgate

Ramsgate’s regeneration has been quieter and less funded than Margate’s, which locally is a long-standing grievance.

The Royal Harbour is the town’s asset and its problem: a substantial piece of working infrastructure owned by the district council, requiring dredging and maintenance, without the ferry income that once supported it. The marina is busy, the fishing fleet is small, and offshore wind support is the growth use.

The town’s Georgian and Regency housing stock has drawn the same buyer as Margate’s, later and more slowly. Restoration has concentrated in specific streets while others have not moved at all, which produces the sharp contrasts a visitor notices within a few hundred yards.

The Pugin buildings and the tunnels give the town a heritage offer that is under-exploited relative to Margate’s cultural one, largely because it has never had comparable investment behind it.

The new station

A station opened at Thanet Parkway, near Cliffsend, in 2023, intended to improve access to the isle and to serve development and employment sites including the Manston area.

It was contested through planning and remains contested locally, on the grounds that it duplicates existing stations, serves a site whose development is unresolved, and cost a substantial public sum for uncertain benefit. Supporters argue it removes car journeys and opens land for employment use.

The assessment depends entirely on what happens at Manston, which is the point at which every economic argument on the isle converges.

Manston, the unresolved question

The airport site closed to aviation in 2014 and has been disputed continuously since, through planning consent, judicial review and repeated consultation. One position seeks reopening as a freight airport; the other seeks the land for housing and employment development.

It is the largest development site on the isle and the two futures are not compatible. That irreducible conflict is why the argument has lasted more than a decade and why it has consumed local political attention out of proportion to any other issue.

Anything read about Manston should be checked for its date. Permissions, legal positions and ownership have all changed more than once, and confident local statements about the site are frequently a year or more out of date.

Where the money came from

Regeneration funding on the isle has arrived through a long series of programmes rather than one scheme, and the names change faster than the projects do. European structural funds, national coastal and seaside town programmes, heritage lottery money, enterprise zone status at Sandwich, high street and town centre funds, and county and district capital budgets have all contributed at different points.

Two structural features of that funding shaped what got built.

Almost all of it was capital rather than revenue. Money to build a thing was available; money to run the thing afterwards generally was not, which is why the isle has more restored buildings than it has funded activities inside them, and why more than one project has needed rescuing after opening.

And almost all of it was competitive and time-limited. Bids were written against deadlines, which rewards projects that are ready rather than projects that are best, and produces a pattern of investment shaped partly by which scheme happened to be open.

What worked, and what to learn from it

Looking across two decades, the projects that held up share three features.

They used something that already existed and could not be moved: the harbour arm, the scenic railway, the laboratories, the Georgian streets. Projects built around an asset that had to be here have outlasted projects that could have been anywhere.

They had a local constituency that would fight for them. Dreamland exists because a campaign made the heritage case strongly enough to support compulsory purchase, over years, without payment.

And they were maintained. The difference between a restored building and a derelict one, ten years on, is almost always whether somebody had a revenue plan rather than whether the original build was good.

The projects that disappointed generally promised employment as a by-product of construction and were measured on the construction.

Starting or running a business here

Two practical advantages and two disadvantages, stated plainly.

Commercial property is cheap relative to the rest of the south east, and the high-speed line puts London within reach for anyone whose customers are there. Those two facts together account for most of the creative and small-firm activity that has moved into Margate and Ramsgate.

Against that, the local market is small and seasonal, and recruitment for skilled roles is genuinely difficult because the pool is limited and the commute deters candidates from Canterbury and beyond. Businesses that plan for both, by selling outward and training inward, do better than those that assume a city’s conditions apply.

Support exists through the district and county councils, the local enterprise structures and the college’s business links. It is worth asking rather than assuming, particularly about premises and about apprenticeship funding.

The measure that matters

The test for any of this is not whether a building opened. It is whether household incomes on the isle moved, and whether the wards that were most deprived twenty years ago are less so now.

On that measure the record is thin, and saying so is not a criticism of the individual projects. A gallery, a theme park and a science campus were never going to change a district’s income distribution on their own, and nobody with responsibility claimed otherwise at the time, whatever was implied in a press release.

What would move it is the thing that has been hardest to fund: not capital projects but the ordinary business of skills, transport and childcare that lets local people take the jobs that already exist. That argument is less photogenic than a ribbon and it is the one that keeps being deferred.

Frequently asked questions

Is Discovery Park an employer?

No. It is a science and technology campus let to independent companies, and vacancies are advertised by those companies rather than centrally.

Did the gallery at Margate work?

On visitor numbers and on the growth of the Old Town, yes. On distributing the benefit across the town, much less so, and property and rent increases have fallen on households that saw none of the gain.

Is Dreamland still open?

Yes. It has changed operator and business model more than once since reopening in 2015, and it operates as an amusement park and events venue with the restored scenic railway.

Why was the new station controversial?

Because it cost a substantial public sum, sits close to existing stations, and serves an area whose principal development site remains undetermined. Supporters point to reduced car journeys and to opening land for employment.

What is happening at Manston?

It has been in dispute since the 2014 closure, between reopening as a freight airport and redevelopment for housing and employment. No settled outcome exists, and any account of it should be dated.

Is Thanet a reasonable place to start a business?

Cheap premises and a fast rail link to London are real advantages. A small seasonal local market and difficult skilled recruitment are real constraints. It suits businesses that sell outside the area.